America has come a long way in its history in according females the same essential and fundamental rights as men. While there are a few that decry such a thing, believing still that a woman's place is in the home, or subservient to men; in general, most people have adjusted to the fact that all humans are created equally by the same Creator and it is comforting to see that American jurisprudence pretty much acknowledges the equality of women to men in today's society.
The bottom line is that within societies in which women are not accorded the same respect and opportunity as men, those societies , for the most part, are not progressive or fair societies. A case in point is that women that aren't educated have far fewer good economic opportunities to afford themselves of, as well as if certain professions as a matter of course do not hire females, than females have less fair economic opportunity.
In situations in which females have no or little economic opportunity, or no or little freedom once then become married, than they are sacrificing freedom for what may, in the best of cases, be security, and in the worst of cases, a peculiar sort of slavery. When women are incapable of being able to have freedom of choice, freedom of movement, freedom of education, or freedom of opportunity, than they are to a large extent, significantly limited in what they can or cannot do.
For instance, without money and with limited opportunity to earn legitimate money, women are basically going to be either wards of the state, or enslaved to the men or families in their lives, neither of which represents equality or fairness. While there is absolutely nothing intrinsically wrong with women that desire to simply find a husband and thereby to create a family, it should be a choice made by the woman, voluntarily, and further, should be a choice that is made, with the woman having had a fair chance to educate herself and to find fair employment at fair pay.
Mankind, for whatever reasons, seems to enjoy lording it over other people, whether it is the male over the female, or one race over another race, or one country over another, or the rich ruling the poor, but just because that is the way things have been, does not mean that it is the right way for things to be, for it is not. The greatest countries are the countries that do not preclude dreams and opportunities being presented to all, because they do not prejudge a person based on sex, creed, caste or so forth, but are willing to engage others based on their individual merits and their unique character.
Women that are not free, and are given limited educational and economic opportunity, are no credit to any society that allows such to occur. Those that wish to oppress others in all of its many forms, can find all sorts of so-called authoritative writings or voices to justify their actions and behaviors, in addition to a whole slew of reasons why such and such benefits or protects the person in question, but few of those crying the loudest for such fundamentalist claims are willing to suffer personally from the same restrictions that they desire so richly to impose upon others, indicating the corruptness and emptiness of what they preach.